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Four years ago this month, I visited the monarch butterfly’s overwintering grounds in Michoacan, Mexico. Today, the same towns I visited are under attack from drug lords and gangs. It breaks my heart that travel restrictions prohibit other teachers from traveling there with the Monarch Teacher Network right now.

To celebrate the beauty and magic of that trip, I wanted to link to the posts I shared after my trip. Join me in reminiscing by reading some of my updates from the trip, linked below.

My trip to Mexico, and all of my dealings with the Monarch Teacher Network, made up some of the most powerful professional development I have ever participated in. I still act as staff at the annual summer workshops here in NJ and I hope to start traveling with some of the workshops in the next few years. Check out the website- if they are offering a workshop near you I highly recommend it.

Readers’ Guide
In its daily news pages, The Times presents both straightforward news coverage and other journalistic forms that provide additional perspective on events. These special forms — news analysis articles, columns and others — adhere to standards different from those of the editorial and Op-Ed pages. The news and editorial departments do not coordinate coverage and maintain a strict separation in staff and management.

All articles, columns, editorials and contributions in the newspaper are subject to the same requirements of factual accuracy.

Here are descriptions of the various forms:

IN THE DAILY NEWS SECTIONS

Man or Woman in the News: A portrait of a central figure in a news situation. It is not primarily analytical, but highlights aspects of the subject’s background and career that shed light on that figure’s role in the current event.
Reporter’s Notebook: A writer’s collection of several anecdotes or brief reports, often supplementing coverage of a major news event like a summit meeting or an important trial. The items provide glimpses behind the scenes that flesh out the reader’s sense of a major story.
Memo: A reflective article, often with an informal or conversational tone, offering a look behind the scenes at issues or political developments. The article (with a title like Political Memo, White House Memo or Memo From London) may draw connections among several events, or tell the reader who or what shaped them.
Journal: A sharply drawn feature article focusing on a place or event (and labeled with the place name, whether foreign, national or regional). A Journal article is closely observed and stylishly written, often light or humorous in tone. It is intended to give the reader a vivid sense of a place and time.
News Analysis: A close examination of the ramifications of an important news situation. It includes thorough reporting, but also draws heavily on the expertise of the writer. The article helps the reader understand underlying causes or possible consequences of a news event, but does not reflect the writer’s personal opinion.
Appraisal: A broad evaluation, generally by a critic or a specialized writer, of the career and work of a major figure who has died. The article often accompanies the obituary.
Review: A specialized critic’s appraisal of works of creativity — movies, books, restaurants, fashion collections. Unlike other feature writers, critics are expected to render opinions in their areas of expertise.
News-Page Column: A writer’s regularly scheduled essay, offering original insight and perspective on the news. The column often has a distinctive point of view and makes a case for it with reporting. (Columns in the newspaper are displayed with the writer’s name and the column’s title inset into the text.)
The news sections also present a number of regular feature articles that carry labels indicating the topics — for example, the Saturday Profile in the foreign pages and Market Place in Business Day.

IN THE OPINION PAGES

Editorial: A sharply written, generally brief article about any issue of public interest. Editorials are written by the editorial board of The Times, which includes the editorial page editor, the deputy and assistant editors, and a group of writers with expertise in a variety of fields. While the writers’ opinions are of great importance, the editorials also reflect the longtime core beliefs of the page. Unlike the editors of the news sections, the editorial page editor not only reports to the publisher, but consults with him on the page’s positions. Editorials are based on reporting, often original and in-depth, but they are not intended to give a balanced look at both sides of a debate. Rather, they offer clear opinion and distinct positions.
Editorial Observer: A signed article by a member of the editorial board. These articles have a more distinct personal voice than an editorial. They often reflect personal experiences or observations, and may be written in the first person. These articles are not intended to be policy pronouncements, but do not contradict the board’s positions.
Op-Ed Column: An essay by a columnist on the staff of The Times, reflecting the opinions of the writer on any topic. Columnists are expected to do original reporting. Some travel extensively. Op-Ed columns are edited only for style and usage, not for content. Columnists do not submit their topics for approval, and are free to agree or disagree with editorial positions.
Op-Ed Contribution: An article by a person not on the staff of The Times, reflecting opinions about a topic on which the author is an expert or has provocative and well-reasoned ideas. These articles, most of which are solicited by the editors, are not intended to reflect the positions of the editorial board. Indeed, the Op-Ed page is seen as a forum to air diverse and challenging viewpoints.

My husband and I were out to dinner this weekend at a local hibachi restaurant and we were seated with a group of high school girls. I would guess they were freshman or sophomores. The girls spent the entire dinner on their cell phones or making comments about each other, which my husband could not understand. “Why are girls so catty?” he kept asking me.

I, on the other hand, was fascinated by the care they took when crafting their text messages. One of the girls was in the middle of some sort of fight with a boy and every time he texted her they all crowded around her phone and dissected his short text messages. But what I was intrigued by was the time they spent in crafting the perfect response.

*Imagine this conversation taking place with all four girls constantly talking over each other.*

“What should I say?” the girl with the cell phone asked her friends.

“Just say that’s ok”.

“No! Not ok. Say something else…”

“That’s not cool?”

“You’re an idiot? Ha!”

“Try that’s fine!”

“Yeah, that works. But don’t use an exclamation point. You don’t want him to think you’re excited.”

“Right. You don’t want to be nasty but you want him to know you’re annoyed. Not angry, just that you’re annoyed at him.”

“Ok. So I wrote ‘That’s fine.” period.”

“Perfect!”

This took about three or four minutes. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since. These girls took such care to choose exactly the right words and punctuation in order to convey the tone they desired. They knew what they wanted the audience (the boy) to think when he read the words they crafted.

How do we get these girls, and all students, to care this much about the writing they do in the rest of their life? I don’t just mean in school- having a teacher read your essay isn’t exactly a real audience. But what about the words they write online? The Facebook updates, the tweets, the tumblr posts…..all of these deserve the same care in word choice and punctuation. We need to capture this scene and transfer it to all writing.

One way to do this in school is by providing opportunities for students to write for a real audience. A great way to do that is publishing online. I’ve started doing that this year and the response has been great. My students just finished writing creative nonfiction literature responses about books that have influenced their lives and in my search for the perfect online publishing space I discovered posterous.com

Posterous is a lot like tumblr but I find it to be a bit more academic. There are more controls (moderated posting and moderated comments for instance) but the ease of use is still there, which is key. And the best part, for teachers, is that students can email work directly to the blog account and with a quick once-over I can post them. It’s practically instant!

I gave my students the option of publishing this last writing piece and about 25% of my freshman followed through. Those who chose to publish are thrilled with the response and love getting comments. If you are interested in taking a look, the essays can be found here.

Where online do you publish your students? I’m always looking for more outlets and I’d love to hear from you!

I was fortunate enough to meet author Matthew Quick at NCTE back in November. I picked up a copy of his book and promised myself I would read it soon. Then I got the opportunity to head Mr. Quick read a bit from the book and speak about writing it and I was hooked. I read Boy21 a few days after coming home from NCTE and I’m still thinking about it. I expected to like the book due to Quick being a Jersey boy and the Jersey roots of the story. I’m also a basketball fan and figured it would be good for me to have another go-to sports book for some of my readers. After reading Boy21 I realized it is much more than a sports book. As one of my students said upon completing the book, “Mrs. G, it’s not just a book about basketball. It’s about life. And it’s really good.”

Finley lives in Bellmont, a dying town where racism, the Irish mob, and poverty are a part of life. Finley is one of the few white kids in his high school, where his team mates refer to him as “White Rabbit” because he’s the only white guy on the varsity team. He’s a hard worker who may not be the best on the team but just may be the most disciplined and most dedicated. He hopes that basketball will be a way out of Bellmont for himself and his girlfriend Erin, who is a fantastic basketball player. They practice together all summer in preparation for their senior year. But things take a turn for the bizarre when Coach shows up one night and asks Finley to look after a new student (and hopefully a new member of the basketball team).

Russ is a weird kid. Coach explains to Finley that his parents were recently murdered and since then Russ has been shutting the world out. He’s moved back to Bellmont to live with his grandparents and get a fresh start. But when Finley meets him, he realizes that Coach was not entirely truthful. It turns out Russ is one of the top-rated high school players in the country, or at least he was. Now, he refers to himself as Boy21 and has a bizarre obsession with outer space. Oh, and he no longer has any interest in basketball. Coach wants Finley to look after him and convince him to play basketball again, even though that means Finley will probably lose his spot on the team if Russ decides to play.

And then something terrible happens to Erin, and Finley and Russ must deal with the tragedy and loss in their pasts, and the possible losses they may suffer in the future.

As my student said so eloquently when he handed back our classroom copy of Boy21, this is a book about life. Smart, funny, raw, and touching, it’s a book I can confidently recommend to all of my readers, from reluctant to voracious. The characters are real and their lives are not perfect. I found myself wanting to dive between the pages and rescue Finley, Russ, and Erin. But at the same time, I knew that none of them would allow themselves to be rescued. Boy21 is a book I am looking forward to handing to a lot of my John Green fans, because Quick’s book is smart and witty while still making the reader’s heart break and put itself back together again.